You know all these people, give me a name.” Well, I had made a talk at some Texas Parks thing not a year or two earlier, about zoo signs. And the guy who had organized that was a guy named Charles Campbell, and he was the director of parks in… Read More
And he comes to the aquarium, to my office at the zoo, and he says, you know, “Who should we hire?… Read More
And so he says, “Well, call him up.” So I call up Campbell and I’m, you know, first name basis. And he says, “Well, what’s going on?” And I said, “Well, Mr. Hittson got relieved today of his park director duties. And I have one of the chairman of the… Read More
The zoo was a big PR plus for the park department, but there was a lot of jealousy there. We need to, you know, build this recreation thing. We need to put park benches over here and all of that. So there’s competition. And there’s a little jealousy there when… Read More
But he had a problem of his own with management. They didn’t fire him, but they lowered him. Okay. I had some good friends on the park board. One of them got himself appointed as the search committee to replace Mr. Hittson. Read More
Well, not by choice. You haven’t asked me about the zoo management systems yet. But zoos started out as, you know, a park in the city, just a few deer, and that sort of thing. As the cities grow bigger, then they put the zoos in the park department and… Read More
And their sonar is just so highly developed. And we put in, you know, underwater microphones. And if we had a guy at TCU. Oh, and I also taught at TCU, by the way. I was associate, an adjunct professor there, and taught for I think about 12 years, and… Read More
Why did you decide to leave?… Read More
They were great. Now, you mentioned they had a baby after you left. After I left. Read More
And later on, they bred and had a baby, after I’d left, but they had a baby. And I made one huge mistake, one huge mistake. A cosmetic mistake, but it was huge. We kept calling these pink dolphins, ’cause that’s what they call them down there, pink dolphins. Actually,… Read More
Well they did that. When the pink dolphins went in this blue tank, they turned gray. Stupid. Well, I wasn’t thinking. But anyway, but they lived, they did. They were wonderful animals. They were an wonderful. You know, they’re very amorous. The pink dolphin is, the river is so, not… Read More
Anyway, when we were building, we had a swimming pool builder built that pool. And at the, I mean, remember we did this in 60 days. The builder, we wanted epoxy in there, you know, finished. The guy said, “What color do you want?” And I mean, this is like,… Read More
That crate was right in the middle of the cabin actually, in and out of the cabin. And when the guy was flying, was getting ready to land, (chuckles) the water in that thing, the top was open, just rushed out into the pilot’s cabin. And it stank to high… Read More
Anyway, I’ll remember it in a minute. It’s been a long time ago. I was out last night, carousing with some narrative wells. And anyway, we caught one. They really were fairly easy to catch. And brought it back, it was a male. And we called him, let’s see, the… Read More
We were at Tampa, you know, we had a fight, oh! Amon Carter agreed to buy that animal, as long as, so if we landed it at his airport, which was halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. He built that airport. Dallas wouldn’t have anything to do with it ’cause… Read More
And so it took about two years. Pretty soon he calls up and he says, “Well,” they called them pink dolphins. “I’ve got Pinky here, you wanna buy it?” And, “Well, yeah, sure, I want to buy it. I’ll have to find some money.” “Well, you better find it in… Read More
They had fenced off, there were manatees in this enclosure, it was huge. And said, “He’s doing fine in there. She is doing fine.” Okay. So we drew up a deal to add a wing to our aquarium. Did you ever see it? Okay. It was one big pool with… Read More
I don’t remember how much it cost. By then, nobody ever asked thing, we were just gonna build it. We had this freshwater dolphin, none, at that time, none in captivity. And with a very unknown record of that kind, that species in captivity. So anyway, we brought her. I… Read More
I think it was in the (stammers)… At one time in the early ’40s, there were only, I think seven gorillas in the United States. One was named Susie and was at the Cincinnati Zoo. And the keeper slept, I’ve heard, slept with that gorilla. And I mean there’s just… Read More
Anyway, back to, what were we talking about?… Read More